


Training

by lousy_science



Category: The Drop
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 13:19:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3069590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lousy_science/pseuds/lousy_science
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After watching The Drop and reading Dennis Lehane's Animal Rescue, I wanted more "Bob hangs out with a puppy" time. Hence this fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Training

The dog had only had his name for a few hours.

“Rocco.” Bob tried it out again. “ _Rocco_.”

He’d seen some kids around his block walking dogs. Some of the old folks had them, too, and it was true that sometimes the owners and pets started to look the same.

A decade of living together will do that, Bob considered, though by that logic he’d eventually start to resemble Marv.

Picking Rocco up Bob took him over to meet his parents. “See, Rocco. That’s Mom. I take after her enough that I won’t end up like Marv. You’ll meet him soon enough, but he’s not a dog person, Rocco. You’ll have to not take it personally.”

Bob kissed Rocco on the fine little plush-velvet hairs on back of his head. He wondered how it knew to grow like that, the nap of it laying so precisely, the neatness of how Rocco was built – his rows of nails and teeth so small and uniform, like shot glasses. Bob’s hair grew any which way. He wondered if he’d ever have to get Rocco clipped, if there was a place nearby that did such things.

That night Rocco failed to stay awake during 60 Minutes. Bob took this as a sign of great intelligence. When he carried him to the crate for bedtime, Rocco made little noises that weren’t like any sound Bob had heard from him so far. “Rocco,” Bob started to say, and then made some of the noises back to him. Rocco licked his face.

In the mornings Bob had always had too much time. Now he had Rocco to take outside. When he got into the kitchen his puppy was tottering up on his hind legs in the crate, whining like a miniature drunk. “Just a second, Rocco, and good morning to you. I’ll get the leash.”

Bob and Rocco got just far enough to spare the carpet and the entryway floor was easy enough to clean. Just a little bleach and some sponging, nothing compared to what he had to deal with at the bar. Bob’s mother had hated air fresheners but he might get one for Rocco’s first few months. Or maybe a pot plant. Bob filed ‘pot plants’ in the list of things he could talk about with Nadia. Along with how Rocco got a claw caught in the screen door and wriggled it free all on his own.

Bob had a smart dog.

It was too late to go outside for Rocco’s business, but they went anyway. Good to get into the habit of the thing. The sun was just starting its engine. Dealing with doorknobs, keys, his hat, a leash and a puppy all at once was one of those motor skills challenges Bob bet a video game fan would ace first time, but he never played those games and there was some time drag.

Together they did an easy circuit from Bob’s place, past the Churchill’s, around from where Timmy and Angelo had crashed for those years, past that bakery which didn’t bake anything but just defrosted the bread and pastries so they tasted like dust, through the two square yards of greenery that kids never dared hang out at after what had happened to Stuart O’Dell. Then back home. It was cold, what it was, and Rocco couldn’t be blamed for wanting to get back inside. “I gotta go to church, Rocco, but I’ll be back soon.”

That night he got out the photo albums so Rocco could see more of his parents. They ended up doing all of them, the whole family going back to the Saginowskis who arrived at Ellis Island and had one picture between the four of them. “Pa and Ma Saginowski, I don’t know anything about them. The kids were Stan and Velma. She ended up in Montana as a nurse. Stan stuck around, got married to Marie, had my Dad, worked in a butcher’s shop for fifteen years before it got sold out from under him, then he became a postman.”

Bob could still tell a good cut of meat when he saw it. A gift from Stan, that was, passed down through blood. Something in him understood about bodies and how they fit together. He knew it back in the day, in his hands when he fought, where to strike and hit the soft places. What to do with a body with when you needed it gone. Why it was they called them “stiffs”. It’s not something he wanted to know but like the cold outside, there it was.

“It’s bedtime, Rocco.”

Rocco pressed to his chest like he wanted to climb right inside. All Bob could do was keep his arms soft enough for his little head to push under. His armpits had never held so much interest to another being before.

When Rocco was in his crate Bob just wanted to watch him sleep, but the attention kept Rocco awake so he switched off the light and appreciated the good heavy snap of it. American-made fixtures, they lasted forever, which was probably why all those factories had gone out of business and now their light switches arrived at the harbor along with all the other stuff that flooded in.

Now he was in bed and the house was dark. At night he could feel everything that was inside it, from the three-inch square gold ceramic pill box that sat empty in the living room, to the kitchen’s one split lino tile, to the beads of water hanging in his bathroom sink. The dampness in the walls that he’d never get rid of, and the pink candlewick bathmat rolled up in the shoe box for when he cleaned his boots. The airport ashtray his father had used with the smiling plane painted on, and the dent in the wall where Bob had thrown that ashtray once, only to discover it was shatter-proof.

Some things were built to last no matter how hard you pounded at them. Bob felt out through the house and there was Rocco, who was small and felt the cold and knew what it meant to be hit and left alone. Rocco, who had a name now and when Bob said it, looked up at him like Bob was the most important thing in the world.

“Rocco.” Bob said it just as quiet as he said his Hail Marys.

He’d asked Father Pete to tell him about Saint Rocco. “Of course, Bob. He’s one of the children’s favorites, because he’s the patron saint of dogs, and of those who have been falsely accused. What child can’t relate to that?”

Bob hadn’t told Father Pete he had a dog. He didn’t know why not, but it had seemed easier to leave it out. There were so many things you ended up talking about every day – weather, the neighbors, the way things had been – and there was so much time to fill up. Father Pete had smiled and patted him on the back on the way out.

Walking back home Bob had thought about how there were this whole stack of saints, one for everything from wine making to cab drivers to toothaches. But there wasn’t anybody who stood for the rightly accused. How there were some kinds of bad that lay entirely out of mercy’s range.

Rocco was waiting for him. They both ate a little something, and Bob got the leash out while Rocco went to town on a chew toy. He scrambled over and dropped it at Bob’s feet, victorious. Leaning down Bob scratched at his ears and thought about how he would teach Rocco how to sit, roll over, stop, all of that, but not beg. Nothing good came from begging for something. No matter how much you wanted it.


End file.
